2015

Excellence in Product

Winner

Cait O'Riordan - Shazam

This year, Shazam achieved a billion-dollar valuation and grew its monthly active user base to more than 100 million. As VP of Product, Cait O’Riordan played a pivotal part in devising and delivering the strategy that fuelled this user growth.

Cait oversaw the rebuilding of Shazam’s iOS and Android apps from the ground, up and focused on moving Shazam from a pure utility to content discovery tool. The redesign involved introducing a content-led news feed, putting more music content on the app, revamping major sections, better integrating streaming partners and delivering more successful native advertising units, which drove up ad revenues. She helped broaden the company’s scope by turning its data on music discovery into new products. Shazam Charts, for example, are now a key indicator of success across the music industry.

In addition, Cait has built a world-class product and creative design team, pushed data-driven decision-making and pioneered a move into wearable tech in 2015.

Runners up

Fred Mazzella - BlaBlaCar

As founder and CEO Frederic Mazzella has played a pivotal role in BlaBlaCar’s recent achievements, including taking complete responsibility for the company’s products.

Amongst his many achievements, Frederic led the launch of a new mobile app, which has received more than five million downloads. He also oversaw the deployment of a new community product last year that allows members to help each other through live chat. Now 90% of requests from new members on the service get a response in less than 10 seconds from experienced members. This increase in community engagement has complemented the growth in overall engagement with BlaBlaCar, which now counts more than 20 million members in 19 countries.

Jonathan Wolf - Criteo

Following a successful IPO at the end of 2013, Criteo has continued to go from strength to strength and at its most recent earnings, posted €262 million in revenues, a 59% increase for the first quarter 2015. It is seen by many as the ‘poster child’ for a successful adtech company with a 90% annual client retention rate for 15 consecutive quarters.

Jonathan Wolf has been with Criteo since the early days when the company was just 30 people and generating a few hundred thousand dollars in revenue. He has led the company’s mobile efforts, with all mobile products developed under his leadership. As a result, Criteo is at the forefront of mobile advertising and Jonathan has overseen a transformation whereby the business has gone from entirely desktop-focused to one where 84% of its customers use multi-screen solutions. He has also introduced a quarterly State Of Mobile Commerce Report, which is now providing benchmark data for mCommerce globally.